^ Mat. xii. 31 ; Isa. Iv. 7 ; Jer. xxxi. 12 ; Ezek. xviii. 22 ; Ps. xxxii. 2 ; Eom. iv. 8. Now if God will not remember nor mention his people's sins, then we may safely and roundly infer that either there is no purgatory, or else that God severely punishes those Bins in purgatory which he remembers not.
EVANGELICAL OBEDIENCE HINTED AT. 327
unto him, ' Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight/ Sincerely confess, and the mends i- is made ; acknowledge but the debt, and he will cross the book. ' And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' In/emus sum, Domine, said that blessed martyr,^ ' Lord, I am hell, but thou art heaven ; I am soil and a sink of sin, but thou art a gracious Grod,' &c. But the father said to his servants, ' Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hands, and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat and be merry.' Here you have, (1.) The best robe ; (2.) The precious ring \^ (3.) The comely shoes ; and (4.) The fatted calf. The returning prodigal hath garments, and ornaments, and necessaries, and comfortables. Some understand by the robe the royalty which Adam lost ; and by the ring they understand the seal of God's Holy Spirit ; and by the shoes the preparation of the gospel of peace ; and by the fatted calf they understand Christ, who was slain from the beginning. Christ is that fatted calf, saith Mr Tyn- dale the martyr, slain to make penitent sinners good cheer withal, and his righteousness is the goodly raiment to cover the naked deformi- ties of their sins.* The great things intended in this parable is to set forth the riches of grace, and God's infinite goodness, and the returning sinner's happiness. When once the sinner returns in good earnest to God, God will supply all his wants, and bestow upon him more than ever he lost, and set him in a safer and happier estate than that from which he did fall in Adam ; and will never hit him in the teeth with his former enormities, nor never cast in his dish his old wickednesses. You see plainly in this parable that the father of the prodigal does not so much as mention or object the former pleasures, lusts, or vani- ties wherein his prodigal son had formerly lived. All old scores are quit, and the returning prodigal embraced and welcomed, as if he had never offended. And now, 0 Lord, I must humbly take leave to tell thee further that thou hast confirmed the new covenant by thy word, and by thy oath, and by the seals that thou hast annexed to it, and by the death of thy Son, and therefore thou canst not but make good every tittle, word, branch, and article of it. Now this new covenant is my plea. 0 holy God, and by this plea I shall stand. Hereupon God declares, this plea, I accept as holy, just, and good. I have no- thing to say against thee ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
IX. The ninth plea that a believer may form up as to the ten scrip- tures that are in the margin,^ that refer to the great day of account, or to a man's particular account, may be drawn up from the consi- deration of that evangelical obedience that God requires, and that the believer yields to Ood. There is a legal, and there is an evangelical account. Now the saints, in the great day, shall not be put to give up a legal account ; the account they shall be put to give up is an evangelical account. In the covenant of works, God required perfect obedience in our own persons ; but in the covenant of grace God
^ ' Amends.'— G. ^ Mr Hooper, at his death. — [Foxe,] Act. and Mon., 1374.
^ Among the Romans the ring was an ensign of virtue, honour, and especially nobility, whereby thev were distinguished from the common people.
•• [Foie,] Act. and Mon., fol. 986.
^ Eccles. xi. 9, and xii. 14; Mat. xii. 14, and xviii. 23; Luke xvi. 2; Rom. xiv. 10 2 Cor. V. 10 ; Heb. ix. 27, and xiii. 17; 1 Pet. iv. 5.
328 EVANGELICAL OBEDIENCE HINTED AT.